There are times when the frustration takes over, crushes, and replaces that love.

It's not necessarily that Latin is difficult, just that at times it's SLOW. Essentially I've got three declensions and two conjugations down, I can mechanically give the forms and the like, however reading Latin can be painfully slow at times. I'm using Wheelock's mainly, my plan of study is this:

Read chapter
Comprehend chapter
Practice using the vocabulary
Do the tests
move onto next chapter

However, as I said, the reading itself is slow (is this natural at first?) and vocab retention is precarious at best.

Yet there are times when I absolutely love Latin, when something finally clicks, when I can point to objects and name them, or make questions out of them.

I use my cats to demonstrate! although Feles magnam mensam portat, is hard to act out...but still you know, and I delight in being able to use the language, however miserly my ability is, for exactly a black cat (nigra feles) can be turned into a question:

Q: Nigrane Feles est?
A: Etiam domine, feles nigra est.

or

Q: Albusne Feles est?
A: Mineme, domina, feles nigra est.

etc, right? (I've spent some times with Adler's )

Also that's another thing, Latin sentence structure. I understand the basics (SOV) but composing some of the sentences Wheelock asks for can be such a task.

Right I think that's about it, it nowhere matches the passioned invective I had in mind, but still I can update later I guess.

You know, this is the first time I've actually enjoyed a language enough to force on with it, I mean I love French films etc but the way we learnt French at school is why I dropped it last year. I actually, most of the time, enjoy opening the text book.

Scribo wrote:There are times when the frustration takes over, crushes, and replaces that love.

I'm experiencing that myself with Greek. Sometimes I come to the point where I hate the language. But I'm motivated by the illusion of one day understanding it all like the back of my hand.

I'm using Wheelock's mainly, my plan of study is this: Read chapter

I've never used Wheelock's, but if it's anything like my Collar and Daniell's, I would suggest you make it a light read. Don't obsess too much with the theory.

Comprehend chapter

Again, if the chapter deals more with theory, a light comprehension would suffice for now. On the other hand, if the chapter is heavy on the reading of actual Latin (like Lingua Latina or any other "Reader") you would do the opposite: read, read, and read until you can make sense of it. Yes, it is SLOW at first (like going back to elementary school), but be assured that your speed will increase if you put the effort into it. I know I can read some Latin at almost the same speed as Spanish, my native tongue.

Practice using the vocabulary

Try pronouncing new words aloud. Give to each new word a distinct emphasis (a sound or a movement) and imagine as vividly as possible its signification.

Do the tests

If you have a "Reader", instead of translating (which for me is such a bore, even though that is what I do for a living ), try rearranging the sentences in an attempt to simplify or complicate its meaning. You could also summarize whole paragraphs into a few sentences.

One last piece of advice: get a small blackboard (or whiteboard) and use it to make the paradigms. It works for me: the hand moves more freely than on paper, and I save trees!

Anywho, that's all that comes to mind. Hope any of this is useful to you in speeding up your Latin studies.

From my own experience, I have found dooge's latin for beginners rather good. If you want to be able to compose or translate latin, studying a grammar is compulsory. I considered studying lingua latina when I first began, but while that approach would allow for a rudimentary sense of the meaning of simple sentences, complex ideas would be hard to analyze in any great detail without a grounding in the fundamentals of the grammar.

For me, I don't find the reading of latin particularly difficult; rather, I find composition and translation from english to latin infinitely more difficult, and again requires a detailed understanding of its grammar.

vastor wrote:I considered studying lingua latina when I first began, but while that approach would allow for a rudimentary sense of the meaning of simple sentences, complex ideas would be hard to analyse in any great detail without a grounding in the fundamentals of the grammar.

... have you ever even looked at Lingua Latina?

And I'd say your trouble with Latin composition is because you learned (or are learning) with a traditional-style course. Lingua Latina feeds you accidence in a systematic way but also teaches you what is more important â€” syntax â€” by its extensive readings in which correct and idiomatic constructions are used again and again. You can't learn a language by studying a grammar alone, any more than you can learn to play cricket by looking at diagrams of the pitch.

Of course, any learner's course will only take you so far: the best (only?) way to master Latin is through reading the unaltered original authors and through using the language actively (e.g., in a journal, or speaking it with friends).

Lucus Eques wrote:I'd say your problem lies in that your curriculum revolves around Wheelock. You should change that at once.

With all due respect, Lucus, I'm getting a bit tired of this. Wheelock may have its faults, but it would not have stayed around as long as has if instructors hadn't found it effective for teaching Latin. We all know your opinions, but there is no single "right" way to learn a language. Half the process is figuring out a system that works for you.

Learning a language is hard no matter what method you use. There are no shortcuts. Even with the best instruction in the world, occasional frustration is inevitable. The important part is to not give up and to find ways to overcome the obstacles which are frustrating you.

Lucus Eques wrote:I'd say your problem lies in that your curriculum revolves around Wheelock. You should change that at once.

With all due respect, Lucus, I'm getting a bit tired of this. Wheelock may have its faults, but it would not have stayed around as long as has if instructors hadn't found it effective for teaching Latin. We all know your opinions, but there is no single "right" way to learn a language. Half the process is figuring out a system that works for you.

I'm going to back up Lucus here. He's addressing a problem that the original poster said he/she was having, id est:

Scribo wrote:However, as I said, the reading itself is slow (is this natural at first?) and vocab retention is precarious at best.

Wheelock's throws a mess of vocabularly at you and encourages reinforcement via exersizes and readings. He did not say that Wheelock was ineffective, only implied that it was more than likely the source of the problem.

Instructors use Wheelock's because the grammatical explanations are simple and comprehensive. The organization of the exercizes makes it great for homework/exam use. However, for vocabularly reinforcement, grammatical usage reinforcement, and word order understanding, it seriously lacks. It's also why Lucus, as well as myself and others here, are big fans of readers such as Lingua Latina. Readers solve the above problems and, if you use something like LL, keep you entertained. The grammatical explanations are never complete, however, so keeping a copy of Wheelock's around for such explanations is a good idea.

If you want to read something where someone talks about the color of their cat or a dog, you'll be hard pressed to find something entertaining in Wheelock's. In LL, dogs are often the prominent, if not pivitol, characters in chapters.

To be quite honest, Scribo, many people find translating sentences such as "Cicero was writing about the glory of the other man and his wife," tiresome when starting out in Latin. These sentences, though important, have little to do with our lives in the 21st century and are consequently quite boring to students. Many instructors may use Wheelock's, true, but many students don't take Latin voluntarily. You could say it has something to do with Latin's emphasis in curriculae, but I'd imagine it has more to do with people having little interest in studying it. Supply and demand, you know.

You may be getting tired of Lucus' argument, but I'm tired of seeing Latin textbooks trying to force boring words like "agricola" and "gladium" down students' throats when much more fun could be have with more meaningful vocabularly. Perhaps if more teachers used LL and spent their lecture periods doing the grammatical explanations themselves and crafting their own exercizes, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Ah thanks for all the replies guys. I'll take your suggestions, especially the one about the whiteboard, to heart. Worry not, I never had any intention of giving up, it's so enjoyable and I really want to be a Classicist.

E Donnely's list has been a help actually, I managed to get hold of a book listed on there, "The Latin Speaker" and have been reciting some of that, about 2/3rds of it are boring prayers, I skipped over those and found some dialogues. I think they're called the "Dialogues of Corderios" or some such, apparently a favourite of the old English system. Reading them is good fun I might say, words I don't know I can pick up from the given translation (certain words are matched in italics for e.g) and I am starting to get a feel for the conversations.

It's not classical Latin, true, but still it's a nice break. Some things are confusing though, like putting the gen before the thing it posesses, it's valuable for giving me synonyms though, translating Latin words into English I would not originally have thought of. I especially enjoy recognising what type of word (in terms of case or tense) even if I don't know it, through studying declension and conjugation tables.

I considered Lingua Latina but got confused as to which one to buy, Amazon lists so many, in the end I just picked up Wheelocks. It's okay I guess, I don't have much to compare it to. The "Latina est gaudia..." parts are so cheesey I can't help but smile.

Quick query whilst I have you, I noticed words are given in the following form:

Amo, amavivi amare amatum.

Well not that order, what do they all mean?

Amo = present indicative active.
Amare = Imperative.

The others ellude me, I noticed Vinci, 3rd conj has "vici" as one of it's forms and immediately thought of Caesar's famous saying.

Since the 1900's Latin has not been taught, for the most part, as a LANGUAGE. Rather, the 'grammar-translation' method has held sway. Latin is treated as a chess puzzle. The goal is not to create students who can THINK in Latin. That is the big difference between a text like Wheelock, which is a grammarian's text. You cannot learn a language this way....oh, yes, you will pick some of it up, as you go along, but not as a result of the method, rather, in spite of it.

Compare the fluency level of a fifth year Russian language student, with a Latin language student, and you will see what I mean. The two languages are about equally difficult. No-one in their right mind would go about teaching themselves Russian using the equivalent of a text like Wheelock.

Here is an excellent summary (with quotations) of Stephen Krashen's
theories on language acquisition. It can be read in 20 minutes or less
and is an excellent reference to bookmark on your computer. Despite
what he says in this work, Krashen is still often accused of pitting
language acquisition against grammar study when, in fact, they are two
different and important aspects of language work. If this is of
interest to you, be sure to read the fourth section of Part II in this
article on the role of grammar.

Krashen addresses the very rational thought that many have that studying
grammar in a systematic way leads to language acquisition. Theories
(made up of studies and data) and observations of second language simply
don't support the popular belief that grammar study produces
acquisition. Grammar study is useful, but for different aspects of
language learning. Krashen certainly does not suggest doing away with
grammar study.

Either one of the two above-mentioned resources, Wheelock's Latin and Ã˜rberg's Lingua Latina, can prepare one for mastery of the basics of the Latin language, but as the saying goes, Horses for Courses.

If your intention in the study of Latin is to think in, compose, and possibly converse in Latin as a pre-modern scholar might, Lingua Latina is a superior resource.

If your desire is to develop a close reading ability with an emphasis on textual and/or linguistic analysis, Wheelock's Latin and similar approaches are recommended.

To any student preparing to take a study of the Classics past the undergraduate level, I would recommend to employ both approaches. That is, to start with a grammar survey like Wheelock and beging a reading system like Ã˜rberg's Lingua Latina after completion of Wheelock or perhaps concurrent with the latter chapters. With this combination, most students would make short work of Wheelock's Loci Immutati or Ã˜rberg's Sermones Romani.

I would not be so arrogant as to hold either Wheelock or Ã˜rberg as universally superior to the other.

This is my first post (hopefully not the last). I'm early in my latin studies. I own both Wheelock and LL but plan to use LL mainly. I strongly second the suggestion by Metrodorus to read up on Krashen. No one should study a FL without an understanding of his Monitor/acquisition theory. You can quibble about the details and many people have but I'm convinced from my own experience gaining fluency in written and spoken Spanish and also as a teacher of EFL that he is right on the main points.

It is most important to understand 2 things; the learning/acquisition distinction on the one hand and the notion that true acquisition of a language (including reading skill) requires massive amounts of comprehensible input (CI) on the other. Language textbooks generally provide very little actual CI, Wheelock included (count the number of latin sentences you will actually read in a typical chapter in Wheelock multiplied by the number of chapters to see what I mean). Even the Wheelock short story companion is pitifully short. LL is a big step in the right direction when it comes to CI but in an ideal world (from a language acquisition point of view) LL would spread the same amount of vocab and grammar over 3 or 4 times as much text as it actually does. Still, it's much better in that regard than anything else out there.

There have been more than a few brilliant latin scholars who learned the language inside out but never really acquired it. That is, they never learned to read it fluently from left to right without mental translation - the way we all read English. It forever remained a puzzle to be decoded and translated sentence by sentence- a puzzle they could decode quickly perhaps - but that is not what language acquisition is. I love the fact that I can read Spanish the way I read English where the meaning simply pops off the page with no translating or mental rearrangement of the words needed and I hope to be able to read latin that way as well some day.

But I should also add that I am also a fan of having more than one book to work out of when studying a language on my own. So I'll probably work out of Wheelock too from time to time just for variety.

I think eventually I'll pick up LL, as I said, it sounds interesting, is it like Adler at all? (which do I buy? there are sooo many. Do I complete WL or grab LL ASAP?)

Alright guys, I've got 6 weeks or such until school resumes, is it possible to get some sort of a grasp on this language by then?

I want to try writing something in Latin, nothing...creative, you know, basic dialogues etc and post it on the agora, but I'd be alittle embarassed, is it worth having ago even if I have to constantly refer to a dictionary?

MarcusE wrote:There have been more than a few brilliant latin scholars who learned the language inside out but never really acquired it. That is, they never learned to read it fluently from left to right without mental translation - the way we all read English. It forever remained a puzzle to be decoded and translated sentence by sentence- a puzzle they could decode quickly perhaps - but that is not what language acquisition is. I love the fact that I can read Spanish the way I read English where the meaning simply pops off the page with no translating or mental rearrangement of the words needed and I hope to be able to read latin that way as well some day.

I don't claim to know jack about linguistics, but I was under the impression that EVERY language you learn past your first will necessarily be less efficient than your native tongue. That being said, I highly doubt you can read Spanish as well as English. It may be that you you can read it fluently, but what you describe is a step beyond fluent.

Well, I didn't actually say I can read Spanish as fluently as I read English. I certainly don't. I did say I can read Spanish in the same way that I read English - left to right, directly for meaning. And it wasn't always that way. It took a bit of time to stop reading Spanish as if it were scrambled English where I was mentally rearranging the syntax to make it "right". Spanish preserves quite a bit of the flexible word order it inherited from Latin and this seems very odd when glossed into english and one tends to do that in the beginning. My point is that my goal in learning latin is to be able to read in the same way, to really acquire the grammar and syntactic rules rather than merely learning them.

Well, I for one can read English (my second language) just as MarcusE describes: no rearranging the word order, no translation, no complicated analysis, etc. The meaning just "pops off" the text. It is like reading in my native tongue, but just shy of being exactly the same (for instance, I have trouble distinguishing between "shall" and "will"). I don't see why it can't be the same with Latin if you really put the effort and start as early as possible.

Thanks for sharing 'The Latin Speaker'. What a find! Edonnelly does it again! E: How did you find it? Try as I might, I can't find a downloadable version of Corderius on Google Books.

It's a shame Google didn't bother to remove the note that the original owner stuck over page 61 (English version of a Latin dialogue). Perhaps some Textkitten can fill the gap with a model translation of the Latin? Moi? Ask again next year...

Also, I notice pages 124 & 125 are missing. But they are in fact the first 22 lines of Erasmus' colloquium 'Diluculum' and can be found here:

I (think I) understand your point about 'left-to-right reading' of Latin sentences versus the 'decoding' method (first find subject, verb, etc). But perhaps it's equally erroneous to suggest that we ACTUALLY read word-by word in a left-to-right progression. At least, when I read English (my native language) I seem to take in whole swaths of words at one go. Swath after swath. (Rather like how we are told we read individual words - the actual letters (lterets) can be scrambled in any order providing the first and last letters are in place - context of course being essential. In the process of reading, it's as though I create my own parallell (anticipatory) sentence (or set(s) of sentences) in my mind as I scan the word landscape below and then 'beam up' the 'meaning' that feels most plausible or convenient at that moment. There is admittedly a general left-to-right forward (plus downward) movement through the text but the sense-grains within each 'swath' seem to obey no sequential rules.

Thus far I can only read very simple or familiar Latin texts in this way. I confess I'm out of touch with the latest developments in the psychology of reading - please anyone, can you shed light on this matter?

My question is: How best to create in the learner that target-language 'parallell universe' that can operate alongside the learner's own jealous native language system?

Ah good stuff, will check it out. Also the "Lingua Latina et Graeca" podcast (I spotted the link from Latinum) author is developing his own textbook, you can download the first unit and sound files. It's great stuff.